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Back to The lies our culture tells us about what matters -- and a better way to live | David Brooks, with David Brooks.

What Is a Form of Loneliness

For David Brooks, loneliness unexpectedly came to him in the form of fear, of a burning in his stomach. It felt like drunkenness and a lack of solidity. The emptiness in his apartment reflected the emptiness in himself.

Transcript

The lies our culture tells us about what matters -- and a better way to live | David Brooks ·

TED Talks Daily

More from this episode

  1. What Is Are Some Lies That Our Culture Tells UsDavid Brooks admits that he has fallen for these cultural lies. The first lie is that career success is fulfilling.
  2. What Actually Makes People HappyThe deep relationships of life and the losing of self-sufficiency.
  3. How Do You Get Out of a ValleyYou can't climb out. Someone has to reach in and pull you out. From the dark period, David states you have to have a few realizations.
  4. What Does David Brooks Say Is Both an Art and a Fortunate Accident?On TED Talks Daily, David Brooks quotes an old man in Louis de Bernières's novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin, speaking to his daughter about a late wife.
  5. What Are Weavers Doing in LifeThey reach down and grab people out of the valley. They live a relationalist life, not an individualistic life.
  6. What Is JoyJoy is a better thing to aim for than happiness. Joy is not the expansion of the self, it’s the dissolving of the self.
  7. Why Are We in a National ValleyWe need a lot of environmental and economic change. It’s because we don’t have the mindset to balance it.
  8. What Is the Theory of Social ChangeAccording to David, his theory of social change is that society changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them.

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